Hong Kong’s chief justice will once again reprimand a High Court judge and require him to undergo training after he was found to have plagiarised large swathes of submissions for a judgment, in what is at least the sixth instance of extensive copying.
In a response to the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, the judiciary said that Wilson Chan Ka-shun would face a “serious reprimand” from Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung for the second time since 2023.
It said that in light of Chan’s previous instances of plagiarism in 2023 and 2024, the judiciary had adjusted Chan’s judicial work last year and assigned him to criminal cases that did not require written judgments.
“Because [Chan]’s judgment in this case again involved extensive plagiarism, the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal and the Chief Judge of the High Court will issue him a serious reprimand and require him to undergo targeted training,” the judiciary said.
The Chief Judge of the High Court is Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor.
Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial after it found Chan engaged in “impermissible judicial copying” by plagiarising about 95 per cent of the defence counsel’s submissions in his ruling in a 2024 case.